Do you know how to gather the right data to help you achieve your business goals? Are you looking for new ways to measure social media success?

On November 26, Shawna Tregunna, founder of ReSoMe (Relevant Social Media), helped answer these questions and showed attendees how to maximize readily accessible data to measure success in social media activities.

When developing a measurement strategy, it’s important to answer what makes a great metric. Two factors should be considered: what type of measurement is relevant to the success of the business and does the measurement provide actionable insights.

Once you determine how to measure your social media data, next step is figuring out what you have to compare the data to in order for it to be purposeful for the business.

Shawna provided a great model explaining the marketing sales funnel and its customer touch points the buyer journey:

Here are four key metrics to help measure the success of your funnel:

Number of opportunities in your funnel and the rate at which you are acquiring these opportunities – or arrival rate.

The total possible value of every deal in your funnel or total funnel value.

Average amount of time prospects are in the sales funnel until they are acquired.

Average percentage of closes that your team effectively navigates through your funnel.

Shawna advises to not make the mistake of front-loading your sales funnel hoping that it will result in more sales. Take the “Groupon effect” as an example. Offering a truck load of special offers or discounts that attracts volume may not be viable if you don’t have a solid grasp on how your business is currently performing. The key is to making sure your prospects are qualified leads and you’re capable of nurturing them through the sales process and maximizing the impact points in which the leads encounter. Impact points represent the impact on the ability of your business to make money. Every impact point has the ability to make or lose money. For example, employees fall under Cost Centre, but by enabling and encouraging employees on social media, this is an opportunity to turn a cost into a profit.

Impact Points

Profit Centre

Savings Centre

Cost Centre

Acquisitions

Retention

Up-sell

Cross-sell

User-generated content

Referrals

Support Centre

Advertising

Employees

Another method to maximize social media data is integrating with your CRM (customer relationship module). By including customer social media information, you can tie online actions to specific clients within the sales process. Facebook ads also allow you to customize your target audience by email. If your clients email is associated with their Facebook profile, you can create targeted ads and messaging just for clients or prospects.

Shawna capped off the presentation with suggestions for free tools that can help you track and measure:

Riffle – tells you which tools your competition is using, your ratio of posts (new posts, retweets and replies – are you just pushing content or engaging on a regular basis), and top hashtags.

Alexa – learn how your website is ranked via traffic, but ensure you understand your business goals to understand purpose of traffic. Can also provide you with competitive analysis. If social media is driving traffic to your website, what’s your activity compared to your competitors?

Moz link data – measures the quality of inbound links. For example, when you Google search cars in Ottawa, who ranks first? Google takes linking into consideration when ranking search results. How can social media help influence your ranking? Maximize influencers and audience engagement so they direct traffic to your website.

Click here to view Shawna’s presentation Accessible Metrics that Matter. You can also check out our hashtag feed to read what attendees shared and check out our event photos on Facebook.

Don’t forget to save the date! Our next Girl Geek Dinner Ottawa event will be January 29, 2015 featuring Melanie Coulson about how charitable giving is now hi-tech. Stay tuned for more details!

On behalf of the GGDOttawa Organizing Team, have a safe and happy holiday!

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Ottawa Girl Geek Dinners are an offshoot of the London Girl Geek Dinners, started by Sarah Blow. The goal of these get-togethers is to make technology accessible and interesting to all age groups and all people, particularly women.

These monthly events are aimed at providing a welcoming atmosphere and a platform for learning in an informal environment. They are always held in pubs, bars or restos and there is usually a speaker (or several) who talk for a short while on a chosen subject for the evening.

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The hash tag for our events is: #ggdottawa